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Kate Smith 14 Day Pickles
Kate Smith
14 day pickels [sic]
75–100 small cukes
Salt
Water
1 tbsp Alum
Place cukes in a stone jar & cover with brine (1 pt salt to 1 gal Water). These [stand] [in the] brine — [drain], 7 [days/7th day]. [Cover with boiling water? with] the Alum [well?] desolved [sic] — Soak 24 hrs — Wash cukes — Split in Half. Cover with Boiling Wotr [sic] & let [stand] another 24 [hrs], [drain], cover with follow[in]g
Back:
1 oz celery seed — ½ oz stick cinnamon — ½ oz whole cloves
6 cups white sugar — 5 qts Boiling Vinegar
These [stand] [in this] 7 days [before] sealing ([each] [morning/day] dr[ain?] 3 [?] [drain off] liquid, heat to boiling, add 1 cup sugar), pour back to cukes. Let stand 3 days undisturbed. Drain liquid, Heat to Boiling & pour over pickels after placing in jars — Seal While Hot!
[later annotation, ink, different hand or sitting]: ⅓ˢ — almost certainly a scaling note ("make ⅓ batch"), worth flagging in provenance since it's the only ink on a pencil card
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# Kate Smith 14 Day Pickles
*Attributed to Kate Smith (radio broadcast, likely late 1930s–1940s)*
## Ingredients
- 75–100 small cucumbers
- 1 pint salt per gallon water (for brine)
- 1 Tbsp alum
- 1 oz celery seed
- 1/2 oz stick cinnamon
- 1/2 oz whole cloves
- 6 cups white sugar (plus approximately 1 cup per day during syrup stage)
- 5 quarts white vinegar
## Instructions
1. Place cucumbers in a stone jar and cover with brine (1 pint salt to 1 gallon water). Let stand 7 days, then drain.
2. Cover with boiling water in which alum has been dissolved. Soak 24 hours.
3. Wash cucumbers and split in half.
4. Cover with fresh boiling water and let stand another 24 hours. Drain.
5. Combine vinegar, 6 cups sugar, celery seed, cinnamon, and cloves; bring to a boil. Pour over cucumbers.
6. Each day for approximately 3 to 4 days, drain off the syrup, heat to boiling, add 1 cup sugar, and pour back over cucumbers.
7. Let stand undisturbed for 3 days.
8. Drain syrup and heat to boiling. Pack cucumbers into jars, pour boiling syrup over, and seal while hot.
## Editor's Notes
- **Attribution:** Card is headed "Kate Smith 14 Day Pickles" — Kate Smith hosted daytime radio programs in the late 1930s and 1940s that regularly featured recipes. The card's phonetic spellings ("pickels," "desolved," "Wotr") and mixed longhand/Gregg shorthand are consistent with real-time dictation transcription from a radio broadcast. Treat as probable provenance, not confirmed.
- **Gregg shorthand:** The card mixes careful longhand for quantities and unusual words with Gregg shorthand outlines for repeated process phrases ("stand," "drain," "each"). This pattern is characteristic of dictation transcription. All shorthand has been expanded with high to moderate confidence; one passage in the verso parenthetical remains uncertain and is reconstructed from recipe context.
- **Alum** was a standard period ingredient for crisping pickles. It is no longer recommended for home canning by the USDA; modern recipes substitute calcium chloride (Pickle Crisp) or simply omit it.
- **Sugar quantity** accumulates over the syrup stage — the 6 cups in the initial syrup plus approximately 1 cup added per reheat day produces a very sweet finished pickle, consistent with the 14-day sweet pickle tradition.
- **"Seal while hot"** — period canning instruction; follow current USDA home canning guidelines for safe processing.
- **Stone jar** for the brine stage = a ceramic crock; a large glass or food-safe plastic container is the modern equivalent.